Ralph
Nader, whose presidential candidacy has been germinating since last fall,
finally dropped the other shoe on February 21. The longtime advocate for
consumers, workers and the environment will seek the Green Party nomination,
hoping that his campaign will catalyze "a sustained effort to wrest control
of our democracy from the corporate government and restore it to the political
government under the control of citizens."

The timing of his Washington press conference couldn't have been worse.
It came on Presidents' Day, the same day as the Gore/Bradley debate in
Harlem and the day before the Michigan primary, where the Bush/McCain
contest was absorbing the national media's attention. As a result, Nader
got blacked out on the tube, and most of the dailies consigned his announcement
to the deep inside pages.

This
time, Nader is fundraising aggressively.
Credit: Chris Kleponis/AFP

That's too bad, because Nader's lengthy statement of candidacy was one
of the most eloquent and sharp-minded dissections of the crisis of American
democracy heard from any public figure of stature in years. "The unconstrained
behavior of big business is subordinating our democracy to the control
of a corporate plutocracy that knows few self-imposed limits to the spread
of its power to all sectors of our society," Nader fumed. "Moving on all
fronts to advance narrow profit motives at the expense of civic values,
large orporate lobbies and their law firms have produced a commanding,
multi-faceted and powerful juggernaut. They flood public elections with
cash, and they use their media conglomerates to exclude, divert or propagandize."

Would that this salutary tough talk had broken through the corporate
media blackout. Naderites, explaining the unfortunate timing of the announcement,
point out that election law deadlines in some states meant Nader could
not postpone his declaration by even a week. There was also enormous pressure
from the Greens, who were champing at the bit to begin activating their
troops--and were also looking for assurances that Nader's campaign this
year would be a far cry from his frustrating, token non-campaign of four
years ago, when he made only a handful of appearances.

That Nader's race this time will be infinitely more serious than in 1996
is evidenced by his heavy campaign schedule: In the first two weeks in
March, Nader plans to make multiple stops in California, New Mexico, New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Texas. In 1996, Nader spent
only $5,000, and refused to ask for large contributions. This year, he
has signed fundraising letters for an extensive direct-mail appeal and
is personally calling $1,000 donors.

With a fundraising staff headed by Marnie Glickman, who has worked on
several Democratic senatorial campaigns, Nader hopes to receive $2.5 million
by August, which--if he can meet an FEC requirement that he collect $5,000
in each of 20 states--will qualify him for primary federal matching funds,
bringing his total war chest to $5 million. A lot of that money will go
toward getting Nader on the ballot; the Green Party is assured of a ballot
line in only 12 states. Once the ballot-access drive is completed, the
Greens will formally kick off their campaign with their first national
nominating convention, to be held at the Renaissance Hotel in Denver on
June 24 and 25.

With the exception of Steve Cobble, the campaign's senior strategist--who
served as field director in Jesse Jackson's presidential campaigns--most
of Nader's team has limited campaign experience, drawn either from the
skein of public interest organizations Nader has founded in the last three
decades or from Green Party cadres. California will provide Nader with
his largest ready-made organization: The party has 100,000 registered
voters in the Big Enchilada, and has elected some 30-odd Greens to public
office. But, with the notable exception of New Mexico, in most of the
other states the Nader campaign will have to be built nearly from scratch.
Still, the Naderites hope to attract large numbers of new activists who
have hitherto abstained form electoral politics--and they point to the
2,000 e-mails they received from volunteers in the first 24 hours after
Nader's announcement, despite the media blackout.

Nader's goal is to get the 5 percent of the national vote necessary to
qualify the Greens for FEC matching funds based on the campaign's total
fundraising by November, thus making the fledgling party a permanent part
of the national political discourse. The party has embraced Nader's economic
agenda, and is emphasizing what it calls a "blue-green" alliance of workers
and environmentalists that seeks to expand on the successful coalition-building
around the anti- WTO protests in Seattle.

Given Nader's still-enormous name recognition--especially on college
campuses, where he is much in demand as a speaker--his reaching the 5-percent
goal is not out of the question. A Gore/Bush matchup in November would
provide the great opportunity to attract disillusioned voters to Nader,
especially given the two candidates' similarity on pro-corporate trade
policy. Nader has a resounding message to deliver, one that's unique in
this presidential year. And as Eugene Victor Debs used to say, "It is
better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what
you don't want and get it."